Fire at Turn 8 June 19, 2011

[Fastone60]

(Repeating a posted comment in Vintage section)

I was the driver that had the incident at #8 on Sunday. I'm home and I'm fine. I have a lot of folks to thanks and some lessons to share.
First let me thank Mr. Kevin Shaubel. Kevin was a spectator who jumped the fence, grabbed an extinguisher and got to me quite a bit before anyone else. He's the one that put out a fire on my suit (explanation to follow). Now I'm sure CASC and Mosport will comment BUT Kevin saved me from more serious injuries and I'm sure glad he defied everything to get at me.

Next, I need to thank the Marshals and race medical. I was given only the best, most comprehensive care and treatment - ladies and gentlemen in white and yellow - thank you.

Lessons for drivers and recommendations both to VARAC and CASC:
1. practice speedy car exit
2. window safety nets may not be fireproof . In my case, on exit I had to sit on the door edge: the net was on fire and melted onto my suit. That was most of the fire that Kevin put out (I think).
3. Cool Shirt plumbing can hang you up and keep you close to the flames. I'm not completely sure how I managed to get loose but it took a couple of hard yanks to disengage and get clear.
4. Gateway has mentioned the existence of a simple battery shut off that reacts to impact automatically and can be reset as required from a dash mount button. In my case, I forgot the cut off switch and the electric fuel pumps continued to pump fuel from a ruptured gas line. You can be sure that this will be part of the re-build.
5. Make sure the pin is out of the fire extinguisher button. Mine was or it would have been much worse.

I'm sure there's more to learn and bits of the incident are still coming back.

Meanwhile, thanks as well to all my racing colleagues for their best wishes.
Race safe and I'll be back as soon as $$ and my wife allow!

Regards - Steve Clark Car #79, Trans-am Corvette
Edit/Delete Message

[Director]

Steve,
I'm glad to hear you're ok. You make some real good points for racers to think about. It seems we always learn valuable lessons from the unfortunate accidents.
While officially we would never condone any spectator jumping the fence, we can truly appreciate the sentiment of someone coming to your aid and to save your life. If I was in the same position and someone came to my rescue, I'd be grateful for their assistance. We can also be thankful that Mr. Shaubel was not injured during the incident.

[Fastone60]

hank you Perry for a cogent and imperial view. I'm sure the the legal hounds would advise us all to run for cover but when when you're in the fury, and incidents demand action right now, one fireman is worth 12 lawyers!

[bumblebee]

Ford makes a fuel pump shutoff g-triggered switch which has been the staple of professional sportcar racing for a while, p/n in my office (not there now) but I think that it is still in the current T/A rulebook...had to pass N/A car safety rules, well engineered, reliable, and inexpensive...I used one in every one of my personal cars and every car we built for clients...Pegasus sells Nomex material fairly cheaply that you can easily make a Nomex window net out of (we have made several, or I should say that the in-house pro, my wife, has)...it is not expensive to follow up on the recommendations reviewed!

Steve

in office now, HRP World sells it;
http://www.hrpworld.com/index.cfm?tp...action=product

p.s. maybe CASC-OR should amend rulebook so that any vehicle that uses an electric fuel pump requires an inertia cut-off switch, good pro rule, no difference between a pro and an amateur in an accident especially when $100 is the price of fuel safety...

[SlotMotorsports]

We use one in our car mounted beside the driver , its also wired to a light on the dash that comes on went it's popped to alert the driver in an instance where it was bumped and can be reset to continue .
I've wondered about the cool suit lines , it appears there is a "breakable" section at the connector , I would be interested in hearing where it separated.

[abrracing]

Gateway sell the inertia kill switches and I will have one installed before our next race! Steve I do have my incar video of driving by after you were already out of the car and I will send it to you when its downloaded or send you a link.

[CAllen]

Steve,

Glad to hear you are fine, and that there was such good response to your incident. I also want to thank you for making the point that driver egress is important to practice. I've been trying to get more guys to think about that in the last year, but you just made the point far better than I ever could.

Good luck on your rebuild, and thank you for sharing such valuable and important information.

[James Appell]

A spectator put out the fire?

[Cdnstunts]

Found a video of the incident.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZtuGdy4k_A

[Cdnstunts]

Originally Posted by James Appell

A spectator put out the fire?

Look like it, from the video..............

[Bill Lobban]

Rumour has it that the spectator was a fireman. This might explain the professional manner in which he fought the fire.

[Fastone60]

I talked to Kevin after. I don't think he's a fireman but he is a drag racer and has had some fire safety training. In any case, he's my new best friend.

[Bubblecar]

This has been previously posted.

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/art...fighting-fire/

It's an articles by veteran racer Charles Espenlaub about a fire that he had - and it should be required reading for all racers and participants.

(when was the last time that most of us practised emergency car exits?)



Respectfully

Nick

[abrracing]

The below statement (taken from the Grassroots story) should be part of our yearly tech inspection:

"In the SCCA’s World Challenge series, in fact, we have to do an exit test every year for every car that we drive. We get 15 seconds to go from race-ready and belted-in to outside the car."

I do this every year long before I show up at track and when the time comes I cant get out in less than 15 seconds I will retire.

[slucas]

We can use more spectators like this fellow. I wonder if he got his ticket cost refunded?